Sharks are cool and comfortable!


Elden Thing | Back & Body Hurts Platinugggggh Rewards Member


Profile pic and banner credits: sharkaeopteryx art by @superkiak! eggbug by eggbug! Mash-up by me!
[Alt-text for pfp: a cute sharkaeopteryx sat on the ground with legs out, wings down, jaw ajar, and hed empty, looking at eggbug and eggbug's enigmatic smile.]
[Alt-text for banner: a Spirit Halloween banner with eggbug and the sharkaeopteryx that Superkiak drew for me looking at it with inscrutable expressions]


I'm a Vietnamese cis woman born and currently living in the U.S. You may know me from Sandwich, from Twitter or Mastodon (same username), or on Twitch as Sharkaeopteryx. I do not have a Discord or Bluesky account.

Ask me about language learning/teaching, cooking/eating food, late diagnosis ADHD, and volunteer small business mentoring. Or don't, I'm not the boss of you.


I think people deserve to be young, make mistakes, and grow without being held to standards they don't know about yet and are still learning. So, if you are under 22, please don't try to strike up a friendship or get involved in discussions on my posts.


Please don't automatically assume I follow/know/co-sign someone just because I reposted something from them—sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Also, if you think being removed as a follower when we're not mutuals is a cardinal sin, please do not follow me.


🐘Mastodon
search for @sharksonaplane@mastodon.sandwich.net and hit follow if you want
Hang out with me on the Auldnoir forum! (you can DM there!)
discourse.auldnoir.org/
Follow me on Twitch
twitch.tv/sharkaeopteryx
Add my RSS feed (not working yet but I'll get to it!)
sharkaeopteryx.neocities.org/rss.xml

hthrflwrs
@hthrflwrs

If your only indie game marketing strategy is posting on social media, you're playing a losing game from the start. Being popular online can kickstart a game's popularity, but actually selling it is a different matter. Posting a few dozen SNAKE FARM keys into the Cohost void pre-launch helped a ton for day-one success and getting those first essential positive reviews, but the vast majority of sales came from sending the game to streamers, playing steam's algorithm game, etc. Social media is only a useful tool if you recognize its limitations and have other methods of driving success!


mrhands
@mrhands

And as a guy who wrote a newsletter about adult games for two years and had to write many many one-line blurbs for various games of differing quality, please fix your store description!! At a minimum, your store page should:

  • Describe how your game plays (Is it a visual novel? Is it an action RPG? Be explicit!)
  • Have a narrative hook for your game ("Everything was great in Farmlandia until the Snakes moved in")
  • Some screenshots showing your game in various interesting states (Not just the main menu, for example!!)

Writing a good store description is really boring and annoying work, but it's probably the most bang for your buck when it comes to converting clicks into money in your pocket!!



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in reply to @hthrflwrs's post:

Annoying streamers with emails is honestly such a barrier at first?? but the more i've done it, the more responses i've gotten that were either chill or very positive, and the worst response i've gotten is silence (which isn't any different than what i was getting before lol). I think it's just one of those things that takes some getting used to, along with some general legwork to find streamers up your alley.

apologies for the OLD COMMENT on an OLD POST but someone linked it to me- like how useful did you find streamers to be for sales? how do ypou pick the right streamer? any resources you point can to me?

I say this as someone who is completely alien to streamers. I have never watched a stream.

thank u for reading

in reply to @mrhands's post:

There are SO MANY games out there with terrible Steam descriptions and useless choices for videos/screenshots. Tell me what your game feels like to play! Show me actual gameplay! I want to get a sense for what the core loop is!

So genuine question on the last point. What if your game is a VN or a twine without much of the way of a flashy or exciting states to procure images for.

Is there any parts of the prose or game that should be highlighted? Impactful CG's cool sprites?

An excellent question! What you're looking for in the promotional images of your visual novel is high emotional impact, not necessarily fancy graphics. This is just a random example, but look at the Itch.io for Coguette Dragoon - Volume 1. It's also a visual novel, and each screenshot gives you a snippet of writing to show you that A) the words are done all good-like B) it's slightly horny. A prospective buyer can then immediately determine if they're into that sorta thing.